June 1, 2008

Broadcast Date: 
Jun 1 2008

Pastor John Hagee claims God sent Hitler, and John McCain finally rejects his endorsement; a major immigration raid at a kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa; plus a major Jewish charity in New York City tries to bust its union.

Episode segments
  • Hagee, Hitler, and the Jews
    Holocaust, National Politics, Christian Right, Anti-Semitism

    Sarah Posner is a columnist for The American Prospect and author of God's Profits: Faith, Fraud and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters (PoliPoint).
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    Sarah Posner comments on the recently uncovered audio clip in which John Hagee--founder of the leading Christian Zionist group, Christian's United for Israel--draws on scripture to say that God sent Hitler to cause the Holocaust so that Jews would move to Israel. Though he'd sought out Hagee's endorsement, John McCain was finally forced to reject it. Yet Hagee's support among some major Jewish institutions and politicians, such as Joe Lieberman and Elliott Engel, seems undimished.

     

     

  • Immigration Raids at a Kosher Meat Processing Plant
    Domestic Policy, Civil Rights, Jewish

    Avi Lyon is a former executive director of the Jewish Labor Committee and currently consults for the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).

    Nathaniel Popper is a staff writer at The Forward, the national Jewish newspaper, who has reported on the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Iowa for several years.
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    The May 12 federal immigration raid on Agriprocessors' Postville Iowa slaughterhouse is reported to be the largest single-site immigration raid in U.S. history, involving some 16 government agencies. Close to 300 of those detained have been sentenced to five months in prison on criminal charges, and the raid may have derrailed an investigation into wage and child labor law violations at the plant. We look at the troubled history of Agriprocessors, by far the nation's largest supplier of kosher meat, and on the growing movement to link the rules of kashrut with ethical and environmental standards.

  • Union-busting at a major Jewish charity?
    Labor, New York Politics
    GL Tyler is political action director at AFSCME District Council 1707, which represents child care workers, home care workers, and workers at various nonprofit organizations.
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    ORT America, a long-established Jewish vocational training program that played a major role in educating Jewish refugees after World War II, has been unionized since the 1930s. Now director Hope Kessler is seeking to gut the union by replacing union employees with new, non-union hires.